Brandeis University is looking to raise cash. Its endowment fund reportedly lost 20% of its value from the Madoff scandal. Looking for a disposable asset, it has focused on art. The Cornell Daily Sun worries about the precedent:
The Rose was founded in 1961 to display contemporary and modern art in step with Brandeis’ commitment to promoting the arts in higher education. It remains one of the premier institutions of its kind, containing works by the likes of Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Jasper Johns. Many of its 7,000-plus works were purchased at the onset of the artists’ careers, and have increased exponentially in value since. The Rose’s collection was valued at about $350 million in 2007.
And Brandeis can put that money to work doing . . . what? Buying more beakers for the chemistry lab? That would at least have the saving attribute of simply favoring one kind of intellectual activity over another. More likely it will be applied to administrative costs, promotional campaigns touting its gender and ethnic sensitivity, newly painted stripes in the parking lot, and other expenditures with no educational benefit.
We should not be surprised since universities have moved purposefully over the past 40 years from being a repository of knowledge to being a repository of grievances.
The decision to close the museum exemplifies the university’s outlook on the value of art: that it is only worth as much as it fetches in the marketplace. Yet, art and museums are invaluable on university campuses because of their intellectual, cultural and scholarly worth both in and out of the classroom.
Selling the great works of the Rose would not only compromise the integrity of Brandeis as an institution of higher education, but would violate the trust of university students, faculty and donors.
All true, but unfortunately curators of knowledge are in short supply. The typical university today is one in which the faculty has conspired in its own marginalization, the donors have favored bricks and mortar or sports trophies over educational substance, and the students have only recently migrated from the wasteland of secondary education with little or no exposure to the arts.
In today’s educational environment where value judgments are condemned and personal whims are glorified, who can complain? Academia has been steadily cashing in its intellectual assets for quite some time.
